What Happened to Putin’s Little Green Men?
.By Dan GouréMarch 22, 2022
What Happened to Putin’s Little Green Men?or Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation
Russia's massive offensive against Ukraine seems to have come off the rails. Prior to the invasion, virtually all the military experts predicted a swift and successful Blitzkrieg. The conventional wisdom was that the Russian military had all the advantages: numbers, technology, position, information dominance, tactics, and timing. This was based on the fact that the Russian military was coming off more than a decade of intensive modernization and had gained useful experience from various operations in the Middle East and North Africa. Russian hackers have been tramping through European and U.S. networks on the cyber front for years.
Indeed, Russia’s 2014 attacks in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine were over in a matter of days. Key infrastructure, lines of communications, military facilities, and government buildings were first paralyzed by cyberattacks and then swiftly occupied by a mix of local forces, airborne units, and Spetsnaz (the so-called Little Green Men).
Russia made a point of using local forces as a cover behind which to conduct its conventional military operations. In the Donbas, Russian-backed forces demonstrated capabilities that proved a surprise to the U.S. military. In one instance, Russian forces employed a combination of electronic warfare (EW), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAS), and long-range fires with precision-guided and special munitions to wipe out two Ukrainian Army battalions in a matter of minutes.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2022/03/22/what_happened_to_putins_little_green_men_823079.html
